one man's effort to avoid burying his hands

Post-Angst Angst

Tye Tribbett (for those of you who may not know him) is a gospel artist who’s been on the scene since the early 90’s. Many, in black church circles at the VERY least, consider him to be this generations greatest musical mind. I’m willing, personally, to say that at a few different points, his music has changed my life.

Due to tragedy in his life (which I won’t be getting into at all), he took a big blow to his ministry and things seemed to be falling apart. After some time away from putting out music, though, redemption swept into his life and he began putting out music again. He released a new album and, to the chagrin of many, it failed a lot if expectations. The new album was indeed incredible, but his previous works have been lauded by a great number of folks to be far and above this new album. Since the point of his tragedy, his music was not the same. It wasn’t the quality that diminished…it was something else.

Yesterday or so, Tye Tribbett released another album, entitled Greater Than, an ode to God superiority to everything else. Per usual, I didn’t hear the album immediately. I usually let the air clear a bit on new music, as to not cloud my own reception and experience of it. Based on what people were saying and how people were reacting about it so far, it was as stupendous a work as his pre-tragedy music. This was the reaction by and large for the first day it was released. The second day is when I decided to listen for myself.

Just before that thought, there were some comments made from some musical minds/close friends that gave me pause. One person said that they couldn’t get past the second song. For those of you who know Tye’s work, this sounds like a pure travesty. But this was someone whose musical opinion I trust. Shortly thereafter, a second opinion from a trusted source surfaced and with not much good to say about the album. It was time for me to check it out for myself.

Upon my first listen through, I found the album to be very good. But, when it comes to Tye Tribbett, “very good” isn’t saying much. Am I holding him to a higher standard of music making? Of course I am. You’d do the same if Michael Jackson were in a high school talent show…that’s how great a musical mind Tye Tribbett is. With that being said I cannot say with any form of conviction that I am impressed with Greater Than. His first album after the tragedy got the same response from me, but over time that album grew on me. Maybe such is the case for Greater Than.

Meanwhile… seemingly everyone I know and a lot of other musicians, singers and musical minds I trust think the album is amazing. For some reason, I feel very itchingly that I am missing something.

Believe it or not, everything written before this line was set up for everything written after it. Bear with me, if it suits you.

Remember about an hour ago, I prefaced this blog post with the statement that my life is my fault? Yea, its a faint memory to me too. Here comes the boom:

I feel very strongly that I don’t love God enough to enjoy this album as much as my counterparts have. I also feel very strongly that currently, my personal and spiritual life is in shambles. That’s a direct correlation in my psyche.

I arrived at this by comparing my life to those that I percieve to be leading better lives than myself, which I know I probably shouldn’t do. But I am doing it. I just want to paint as honest a picture as possible.